Mr Darcy in Middle Earth
by The Bumble and the Bee
Summary: An (affectionate) parody (of sorts) of the "Modern Girl in Middle Earth" stories, as well as their "Realistic" counterparts. If Janie had her pick of stories, she would have landed herself in an Austen masterpiece. Thankfully, Middle Earth has it's fair share of handsome, prissy men, as well.


**Title: **Mr. Darcy in Middle Earth

**Summary: **An (affectionate) parody (of sorts) of the "Modern Girl in Middle Earth" stories, as well as their "Realistic" counterparts. If Janie had her pick of stories, she would have landed herself in an Austen masterpiece. Thankfully, Middle Earth has it's fair share of handsome, prissy men, as well.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything you recognize

**Authors Note:**I've been thinking about writing this fic for a long while now. I have a soft spot for the Girl-in-ME stories, but even I know they're somewhat ridiculous. And while there are several diamonds in the rough (as well as a few very good and well-written deconstructions), I still think there are a good few things worth poking fun at, here and there.

So I'm trying to write a fic that is both as realistic as the premise allows, as silly as I can get away with making it, and as heartfelt as is deemed appropriate.

I hope you enjoy!

Chapter One

_**Mary Something-or-Other**_

When Janie McKinnis was nine, she found her true love.

It was the first day of fourth grade. She and her father had just moved into a new, big house in a nice school district, and little Janie had done everything to make sure her first day at her new school would be perfect. Her hair was braided as neatly as she could manage (which wasn't as neat as mama could do it- but mama was gone so she had to make do), and she had worn her favorite pink dress. Her notebooks and pens all matched, and fit neatly in her _Fairy Pals _backpack. She was even excited the her plastic lunch containers were cute pastel colors.

She had left on the bus with a large smile on her face.

She had come home on the bus in tears.

Though her father was concerned, he couldn't get much information on what had happened from her. All he knew was that she needed a new backpack because, apparently, _Fairy Pals_ was for babies (he later found several of her posters and a shirt or two in her trashcan, all featuring the cartoon pixies).

The next day, she returned in tears again.

Once more, her father could not figure out what was wrong this time, in large part because Janie herself didn't fully understand.

She had bought a new backpack; one without the stupid fairies on it. But as Chloe Stuart had mocked during recess, _a new backpack won't change the fact that you're a fat, brace-faced, nerdy loser!_

Janie didn't get it; she had always been bigger than other girls, but her mama had said it was okay to be different, because she was pretty all the same. And her braces were going to make her teeth nice and straight one day. And she _wasn't_ a nerdy loser. Was she?

Every day was worse and worse, to the point that she hated even going to the yard for recess. She wasn't allowed to stay in class, even when she asked her teacher nicely, though. And asking had just been another thing for stupid Chloe Stuart and her friends to make fun of.

After weeks, and several phone calls between her father and the school, Janie was allowed to spend recess in the library. It wasn't ideal, because at the time books really weren't fun for her, but it was better than being followed around and teased.

It was on her third day in the dusty, near-empty space that it happened; fate.

She was perusing the shelves (none organized or alphabetized, on account of rather messy elementary school students), when she saw it.

On the shelf directly beside her was a book with a brown spine, on which was printed a dragon. It read, in gold lettering _The Hobbit_ and, a little lower down, was a strange symbol Janie did not understand. Her pudgy fingers reached out, inching up to the shelf, and in a moment that altered Janie's life forever... she grabbed the novel beside it.

This one was red, and called _Pride and Prejudice_. It had grabbed her attention because it was written by a lady with the same name as her. She began reading it halfheartedly, but had grown interested by the time she was meant to go back to class, and checked it out.

She had finished it by the end of the week, and went on to find every other novel by Jane Austen that she could get her hands on.

By the end of the month, the discovery that she had only written seven novels broke Janie's heart.

The problem was, Janie was nine. And as a young, naïve girl, she didn't quite grasp many of the deeper themes in Austen's work. She thought it was just romance and ladies and pretty dresses and drinking tea. She didn't pick up on any social commentary and if she _had_ picked up on it, she would have resented it for spoiling perfectly good story by making her have to think about it.

All she picked up on was the idea that, in order to keep her Austen dreams alive, she had to be the sort of girl Jane Austen would write about; smart and pretty and perfect and talented.

_That_ would show stupid Chloe Stuart. Janie would become a thousand times better than her at everything there was to be good at. And then Chloe would come crawling to her with apologies, begging to be her friend, and Janie would laugh in her face and waltz off with some mysterious, handsome man.

Her first attempts were pitiful. Exercising proved to not be something she was very good at, and she couldn't figure out how to speak French using only one of her father's old textbooks. and trying to force herself away from sweets and candy when they were so readily available was a test her willpower failed. So, reluctantly, she enlisted her Father's help.

Initially worried about her motives, her father eventually decided that seeing her happy again would be worth it all. He took her to a nutritionist, who helped her plan out a meal schedule and a healthy diet. The woman, a nice lady by the name of Lisa, also recommended dance classes in the place of traditional exercise. While Janie never got as talented as she wanted, she liked dancing quite a bit and it helped her shed a few pounds, so she was relatively pleased. it also gave her an opportunity to speak with like-minded girls who, while not the epitome of _cool_ in her eyes, at least didn't pull her hair and kick her when the teacher turned her back.

Next was french, because she had known that it was a language all proper ladies spoke; her father bought her a nice computer-program that guaranteed results or your money back, and Janie took to using it an hour every day. She also insisted her get her piano lessons ,and a subscription to a fashion magazine, and she studied it in whatever spare time she had.

During all of this, she continued her schoolwork, and also continued putting up with Chloe Stuart. It seemed, as time went on, that no matter how thin or pretty or skilled Janie got, she could never shake her bullies entirely. And while that bothered and hurt her a great deal, she continued to push herself harder and harder, her mind always on the day she died and went to heaven and met Jane Austen, and how impressed the author would be with her.

Chloe wouldn't be there to see it.

At nine, Janie was very certain that Chloe was going to Hell.

Had she known the path her life would take when she turned nineteen, Janie would have grabbed _The Hobbit_ instead on that fateful day, and devoted herself to studying Tolkien's writings and languages with all her heart. She would have been far better off.

But she _hadn't_ known, and she had grabbed the book she had, and it was on her part to suffer the consequences.

* * *

When Janie McKinnis was nineteen, she found her _not_-true love.

Greg had seemed perfect; great hair, charming smile, disarming kindness and an Ivy-League school to his name. But when she discovered that everything but his smile and his hair had been a lie- on the night she planned on losing her virginity to him, no less, things had quickly fallen apart and she had gone back to her studio apartment to cry.

She was rather pretty when she cried; she had found a way to be rather pretty when she did most things. This was fortunate for her, because there wasn't much else going her way.

She was fluent in French, could play the piano masterfully, and was a half-decent dancer. She had been voted best-dressed _and _best-smile in her private, all-girls high school. Her hair waved naturally, and was a shade of golden-brown without needing to be dyed, and her skin was always clear, and she could name all the benefits of adding Kale to your diet.

But none of that had been too appealing on her college resume, at least when taken together with her lack of attention to anything vaguely academic, so all she was now was the cutest sales associate at Forever 21.

At least Chloe Stuart was out of her life.

Janie didn't get it; she tried _so hard_ to be perfect, but all she ended up being was a flop. No college, no future plans, and now no boyfriend. It was as if her life were out to get her. She worked her but off, but nothing ever seemed to go her way. She was still making most of her money from her father's generosity, and eventually he would stop paying her way. sure, she _could_ have been more attentive in school, but that would mean focusing less on studying the elaborate social structure of girls. and maybe she could have crafted an actually backup plan, but she _had_ to plan the school's social, otherwise how would she have met David Whitmore, the cute student-body-president of the school's brother-school? she had done, in her eyes, everything that was meant to guarantee success, and yet she ended up in _this_ dismal state anyways.

There was always cosmetology school, she thought to herself.

She burst into a fresh wave of tears. These ones, caused by genuine emotion and not something controlled and calculated, weren't as easy to make pretty.

_Maybe I'll get a job teaching a young girl piano. And one day I'll meet her attractive and brooding older brother. And he'll fall madly in love with me.._

No, she needed a realistic plan. A plan not centered on a boy.

But she couldn't think properly. She just wanted to curl up and have all her problems be magically solved.

Finally calming herself with the thought that _even Lizzie Bennet had to go through Wickham before she found Darcy_, she managed to wash her face and change into a clean set of overly frilly pajamas. Making herself a cup of tea and deciding to call it an early night, Janie crawled into bed and cracked open her favorite book, the same one that had altered her life, and that she still failed to fully grasp. An hour later, she was asleep.

And several hours after that, she was gone from her bed without a trace.

* * *

**Now, I know there wasn't much ME in this chapter, but don't worry; that's all coming up!**

**For my protagonist, I wanted to play around with the idea of a Mary Sue. I was thinking of two main concepts; A) bringing in Sue-ish traits but trying to craft a flawed, realistic character around them, and B) a character who _purposefully_ tries to make herself into the perfect woman; a "justified" Sue of sorts.**

**So that's how we ended up with Janie, our weepy, blame-shifting,responsibility-avoiding, well-meaning heroine with a knack for misunderstanding literary genre's.**

**I kind of like her.**

**I hope you enjoyed the first chapter; please leave a review if you did! Also go ahead and review if you hated it. I even won't mind if you're indifferent to it and review it anyways.**


End file.
